Movie Movie
1978 film by Stanley Donen
Movie Movie is a 1978 American double bill directed by Stanley Donen. It consists of two films: Dynamite Hands, a boxing ring morality play, and Baxter's Beauties of 1933, a musical comedy, both starring the husband-and-wife team of George C. Scott and Trish Van Devere. A fake trailer for a flying-ace movie set in World War I titled Zero Hour (also featuring Scott, Wallach, and Carney) is shown between the double feature.
Barry Bostwick, Red Buttons, Art Carney and Eli Wallach appear in both segments, with Harry Hamlin, Barbara Harris and Ann Reinking featured in one each. The script was written by Larry Gelbart and Sheldon Keller.
Plot
The film is introduced by George "The Burns" Burns, who tells viewers that they are about to see an old-style double feature. In the old days, he explains, movies were in black-and-white except sometimes "when they sang it came out in color."
Dynamite Hands
Joey Popchik, a young man from a poor family, dreams of one day becoming a lawyer, even attending night school while selling food on the side. However, his sister is losing her eyesight and the only doctor who could possibly cure her costs around $25,000. This occurs after he encounters a gruff boxing manager in Gloves Malloy, who gave him a business card after he sees Joey pop an arrogant contender. As such, he becomes a boxer to raise the money to have her cured, complete with a handshake deal with Malloy (rather than a contract) with a guy named Peanuts as his second in the ring while a first fight is set up in quick time.
“Movie Movie” enters the record as 1978 film by Stanley Donen. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Movie, film and Stanley can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Movie Movie” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Movie, film and Stanley provides the most credible route into that argument.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1405677. 13 of 13 selected statements include explicit references; 13 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1978 and 1933.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Movie Movie” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.